There are no large coronal holes on the Earthside of the sun. Credit: SDO/AIA.

SPACE WEATHERNOAA Forecasts

Updated at: 2012 Mar 31 2200 UTC

FLARE

0-24 hr

24-48 hr

CLASS M

10 %

10 %

CLASS X

01 %

01 %

Geomagnetic Storms:Probabilities for significant disturbances in Earth's magnetic field are given for three activity levels: active, minor storm, severe storm

Updated at: 2012 Mar 31 2200 UTC

Mid-latitudes

0-24 hr

24-48 hr

ACTIVE

05 %

05 %

MINOR

01 %

01 %

SEVERE

01 %

01 %

High latitudes

0-24 hr

24-48 hr

ACTIVE

15 %

15 %

MINOR

15 %

15 %

SEVERE

05 %

05 %

Saturday, Mar. 31, 2012

What's up in space

Metallic photos of the sun by renowned photographer Greg Piepol bring together the best of art and science. Buy one or a whole set. They make a stellar gift.

QUIET WEEKEND: With the return of formerly-explosive sunspot AR1429 proving anticlimactic, solar activity is low. No strong flares are likely this weekend.

SPRITE SEASON BEGINS: The first sprites of summer are starting to appear in the skies of North America. The strange thing is, summer is almost three months away. "Sprite season is beginning early this year," says Thomas Ashcraft, who photographed these specimens last night from his observatory in New Mexico:

"At precisely two minutes and twenty-six seconds after midnight March 30, 2012 there was an incredibly powerful bolt of lightning in the vicinity of Woodward, Oklahoma that spawned these red sprites," says Ashcraft. "I could see them from two states away!" He also recorded VLF and shortwave radio emissions from the cluster, which you can hear as the soundtrack to this video.

Sprites are electrical discharges that come out of the top of thunderclouds, opposite ordinary lightning bolts which plunge toward Earth. Sprites can tower as high as 90 km above ground. That makes them a form of space weather as they overlap the zone of auroras, meteors, and noctilucent clouds.

Because they are associated with lightning, sprites are most often seen in summer months, "but in the past few days sprites have been reported in Texas (particularly near the Mexican border) as well as here in New Mexico," notes Ashcraft.

NORTHERN LIGHTS: Spring is aurora season, and the Arctic Circle is alight with green. On March 30th, first-time aurora photographer Alex Keen had no trouble finding a scene to shoot in Inari, Finland.

"This was the very first time that I have ever witnessed the Aurora Borealis and to say that I was captured by its magnificence and beauty would be the understatement of the Century," says Alex. "My Dad, Andy Keen, has been 'hunting' and photographing the 'lights' for many years and, up to now, I have only experienced them through his images and the countless stories that he has relayed to me regarding his adventures here in Northern Lapland. To have actually seen and 'felt' them first- hand was completely different and I can now fully understand and relate to his passion for what is quite rightly described by many as one of Mother Nature's most spectacular natural phenomena." Aurora alerts:text, phone.

Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are space rocks larger than approximately 100m that can come closer to Earth than 0.05 AU. None of the known PHAs is on a collision course with our planet, although astronomers are finding new ones all the time.